


Your Smile's My Gift This Year

by GemmaRose



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Christmas Music, Future Fic, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:29:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28463868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: Charlie Watson has put herself through trade school and settled comfortably into a nice, normal adult life. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t got space for old friends though, even if that friend does happen to be a giant alien robot.
Relationships: Bumblebee & Charlie Watson
Kudos: 25
Collections: Secret Solenoid '20-'21





	Your Smile's My Gift This Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withersake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withersake/gifts).



> A/N: Title from [We’re Gonna Have A Christmas](https://whatladybird.tumblr.com/post/37984161672/) by Elizabeth Smart.

Charlie smiled, lifting the just-wrapped box in her hands and testing its heft. Otis was going to _lose it_ when he ripped the paper off, and then probably throw one of the bean bag weights inside at her head when he realized she’d just got him a gift card not a PlayStation. Having older coworkers with kids almost her brother’s age was, occasionally, quite handy. She set it aside, and leaned over to grab Ron’s present. And landed her hand on an empty bag. Goldie mrrped at the sound of the bag rustling, and Charlie sighed. “It’s not for you, silly baby.” she chided, pushing herself up to her feet. She must’ve left it in the trunk of the corvette.

“I’ll be right back.” she assured her staring cat, sticking her feet into the flats she wore to go down to the laundry room and slipping on her nice heavy jacket. Her feet rang loud in the narrow stairwell, and she zipped her coat up as she shouldered out the door at the bottom. The corvette had seen better days, but it had also seen worse. She’d have to stop by a car wash on the way back to California, or Mom would start trying to convince her to sell it again. Like she hadn’t poured her heart and soul into getting it working and keeping it that way.

The near-identical corvette in the unclaimed spot next to hers, however, had a factory-fresh shine on his pretty yellow finish. It had been nearly six and a half years since that eventful birthday, but it’d take a lifetime for her to forget that symbol mounted on his grille where the Chevy logo should be. She pulled her keys from her coat pocket with a smile, and slid into the driver’s seat, picking out the old, disused one she’d never quite remembered to take off the ring. It still fit his ignition, and the purr of the engine wasn’t quite the same as her corvette’s but it was still familiar. She pulled out of the parking spot, and let him guide her to the edge of town, then out into the desert, the gas pedal moving under her foot until they were flying along the road, wind whipping her hair and laughter in their wake.

They pulled off into what she thought might’ve been a quarry, once, and Charlie couldn’t’ve kept the smile off her face if she tried, when she stepped out and heard the familiar sounds of metal sliding against metal. “Hey, Bumblebee.” she said, turning to look up at her friend.

“Hello _Charlie!_ ” he replied, crouching to be nearer her height. She lifted a hand and touched his cheek, noting what looked like weld lines radiating out from one of his eyes as he leaned into her palm, emitting that same buzzing sound he’d made that first night in her garage.

“Still playing talk radio, huh?” she joked, and Bumblebee’s metal skin- armour?- fluffed up, eyes squinting near shut as he played a laugh track.

“How have you **been doing** _since_ I left?” Bumblebee asked, shifting to sit with his legs crossed. Charlie climbed into his lap, settling on his thigh and leaning against his side. He was warm, and when a chilly breeze made her shiver his arm came down to rest on her other side, enveloping her in a little bubble of heat.

“I’ve been doing okay.” she said after a moment of silent consideration. “Colonel Burns, that man who let us go after the whole-” she waved a hand vaguely.

“ **Decepticon attack.** ” Bumblebee supplied, in a voice that was almost familiar but definitely wasn’t human. Not his, obviously, but maybe another robot like him? One whose voice hadn’t been damaged.

“Yeah, after that, the guy who let us go? He got back in touch with me, when I was finishing up trade school. Got me a nice job with a military contractor. I fix cars now, all day.”

Bumblebee made a wordless sound, a high chirp which sounded almost like an alarm clock but if an alarm clock was happy instead of annoying. “ _Like_ you fixed me?”

“Sorta, yeah.” she leaned a little further into Bumblebee’s side, looking up at his face, re-memorizing the planes of it, the layers of metal which shifted and scrunched against each other as his expression changed. “Though most aren’t in as bad a state as you were, when we met, and I definitely haven’t fixed up any more...” she frowned, lifting a hand to tap her chest, where Bumblebee had his badge.

“ **Autobots.** ”

“Yeah, Autobots.” Charlie nodded. “Whose voice is that you’re using, anyway?”

Bumblebee grinned, and the left metal panel of his chest slid aside slightly to reveal a projector. The image of a boxy red and blue robot materialized in front of them, easily head and shoulders taller than Bumblebee if he’d been standing. “ **B-127, I pray this message finds you.** ”

“Oh!” Charlie sat up a little straighter, eyes widening. “That’s right, you played this in the forest.” she rose to her feet, stepping over Bumblebee’s crossed legs to walk around the projection. It looked a lot less pixel-y than it had last time, and she hadn’t heard any loud start-up noises as Bumblebee turned it on. “You met him, then?” she looked over at Bumblebee, who nodded eagerly, eyes squinting slightly in as much of a smile as he could probably manage without a mouth.

“Optimus _Prime_ is our leader.” he said, in three different mechanical voices. Charlie’s mouth fell open for a moment before she remembered she needed it for asking questions.

“How many of you are there?” she asked as the projection of Optimus Prime dissolved. The cute little antenna-like strips of metal on top of Bumblebee’s head lowered, and he looked away. “It’s okay if you can’t tell me.” she said quickly, returning to his side and resting her hands on his upper arm. “Just, they’re taking care of you, right?” she lifted a hand to touch the weld marks on his face.

Bumblebee nodded minutely, lifting a hand to cover hers. “ **Ratchet** fixed me up _good_.” he assured her, using one of the mechanical voices for the name. That must be their mechanic, then. Or would it be a doctor, since they must also be a robot?

“They’re calling you by name too, right?” she asked, letting Bumblebee nudge her into sitting on his leg again. He nodded, and played a few different voice clips of the other robots calling him Bumblebee or just Bee.

“You would _like them_.” he said after another moment of comfortable silence. “ **I** could take you with me. Meet them _soon?_ ”

“I have to be on the road day after tomorrow.” she sighed, slumping against his side again. “You could come with me?” she suggested, leaning forward a little to meet Bumblebee’s eyes when she looked up. “My family never really got to meet you, with the military and the Decepticons and all. We haven’t got any Christmas presents ready for you, though.”

“ _Christmas?_ ” Bumbebee asked, and Charlie giggled.

“Turn that station back on, it’s all Christmas music right now.” she told him. Bumblebee did, and the voice of Bing Crosby filled the air around them. “It’s a holiday, here on Earth.” she explained, when he didn’t seem to get it. “People buy each other presents, and decorate trees, and families spend time together. Mom’s insisting we go visit Ron’s parents for Christmas dinner.”

The music cut out abruptly, static replacing it for a moment as Bumblebee spun the dial, searching for the words he wanted. “I can’t **go** with you.” he slumped forward slightly, letting out a low, sad tone. “ **Bee, you must return to base by Sunday.** ” he played in Optimus Prime’s voice.

“Aww, and you can’t phone home and ask for more time off?” Charlie pouted, but only a little. Bumblebee shook his head. “Well, we don’t have a tree, and I haven’t got anything to give you...” she trailed off, turning over ideas in her head. She didn’t want to let Bumblebee leave without doing _anything_ Christmassy, but there wasn’t a whole lot you could do with just two people and no materials. “Oh, I’ve got it!” she popped back to her feet and spun to face Bumblebee properly. “One thing people do around Christmas time is carolling. They’ll stand around in a mall or something and sing songs for everyone passing by. We can’t exactly go set up in a mall, but we can sing some songs before you have to drop me off, right?”

Bumblebee’s eyes literally brightened, the blue glow intensifying as he nodded eagerly. And turned the radio back on to the Christmas station, now playing Baby It’s Cold Outside. Charlie laughed and swatted him on the arm. “That’s cheating! That is so totally cheating.”

Bee made an electronic sound of clear disagreement, and Charlie laughed again. “Alright, alright, you can’t really sing along with a radio for a voice, but you can’t just let the radio do all the work.” she insisted, sitting down on Bumblebee’s knee. “🎝 My mother will start to worry~” she sang along, then yelped and tumbled right off Bumblebee’s knee when he _honked_ the rhythm of the male response line. For a moment neither of them moved, staring wide-eyed at each other in mutual shock, then Charlie let her head drop and laughed.

“I don’t know what I expected.” she gasped as her laughter petered out, and Bumblebee made a strange noise which she guessed to be his version of laughing, given how his shoulders shook. He leaned forward, and very carefully scooped her up off the ground, sitting her on his knee again.

“You hurt?” he asked in another mechanical voice, and Charlie shook her head.

“You startled me, that’s all.” she assured him. “Won’t happen again.”

Bumblebee gave her a look which quite clearly displayed his disbelief, despite his lack of a mouth. Charlie shoved his hand away from where it hovered at her side with a roll of her eyes. “It won’t, I promise. Now c’mon, let’s see what that horn can do.”

Bumblebee laughed again, and Charlie launched back into the song, decidedly not startling when Bumblebee honked his horn over the parts she wasn’t singing.

\--- 

“This was nice.” Charlie said as Bumblebee pulled into the parking spot next to her corvette. “We never really got to just, hang out, last time.”

Bumblebee made a sound of agreement, engine dropping to idle as the gearstick shifted into Park. “I wish you could spend Christmas with us.”

The radio clicked back on, and after a moment of static settled on a station currently playing Blue Christmas. Charlie bit back a laugh, caressing Bumblebee’s steering wheel. “Y’know, you _could_ celebrate with the other Autobots.” she suggested. “There’s a few days yet, ‘til Christmas, and anywhere big enough for that Prime guy must have space for a really killer tree.”

“Christmas is for _families_.” Bumblebee said, using her own voice for the last word.

“Well, you can celebrate with friends too.” her hands stilled on his wheel. “Christmas isn’t all presents and family you barely ever see. It’s also about, like- like, being together. Celebrating something good and warm even when-”

“🎝 The weather outside is frightful-” Bumblebee bumped the radio volume for a moment, and Charlie laughed softly.

“Yeah, that. You’re still fighting Decepticons, right?”

Bumblebee made a sound of agreement.

“It must be hard, fighting all the time. Your friends could probably use a break, even if it’s just for a little while.” she unbuckled her seatbelt, and Bumblebee opened the door for her like a proper gentleman. Gentle-bot? “Plus, if you’re the one who suggests it, you have the most time to figure out what to give everyone as a present.”

Bumblebee seemed to perk up at that, though it was harder to tell when he was shaped like a car and not a giant robot. The door shut behind her, and Charlie patted the top of it before stepping away. “ _Goodbye_ my friend.”

“Bye.” she waved, and watched as Bumblebee pulled out and turned away. “Oh, wait!” she exclaimed, shoving her hands in her coat pockets and fishing out a pen and a gas receipt. “Bee, wait!” she rushed over to him, pressing the receipt down on his hood. “This is my email address.” she said, jotting down the string of letters and numbers. “Anyone can make one, so long as you have a computer that hooks up to the internet, and then we can keep in touch.” she finished writing the address down, and flashed Bumblebee a rueful grin. “Plus, this way you don’t have to try using paper and pens. I doubt you’d manage that well, considering how _trashed_ the house was when you snuck in.”

“That was six years ago!”

“And I was grounded for six months.” she retorted, leaning over the passenger side door to rap on the glovebox, which opened obligingly. “Send me pics of your tree, alright?”

“Will _do!_ ” Bumblebee promised, and Charlie stepped back again to let him drive off for real this time. Despite the late hour, she felt strangely light as she fetched Ron’s present from the trunk of the corvette and headed back upstairs with it. Goldie was twining around her ankles as soon as she was in the door, and she set the boxed set of the latest Chicken Soup for the Soul books down on the end of the couch to scoop her fluffy little monster up in her arms before she could start crying for attention.

“You’re so whiny.” she informed her cat, walking over to her little shoe mat to kick off her flats. “Whiny baby.” Goldie purred, then meowed in offence when Charlie returned to the couch and set her down on the back of it to remove her jacket. Charlie ignored the protest, and flopped down on the worn cushions, kicking Ron’s books further against the arm as Goldie jumped down onto her chest and settled in to loaf there. Charlie hummed a Christmas song to herself, and dutifully began petting her needy cat.

Bumblebee hadn’t given her a present, and probably wouldn’t be able to come back to deliver one any time soon if he couldn’t even ask for more time off to come back to California with her for Christmas, but just knowing they were still friends was a gift in and of itself. And now that he had her email, hopefully they’d be able to actually stay in touch.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to any not-logged-in readers, but due to an ex who refuses to leave me alone I have had to disable anon comments. Kudos are still open though, and if you want to scream (or would like me to write a fic for you) come check me out on Pillowfort! No account required to get my discord, and I'm always happy to chat. [[Link](https://www.pillowfort.social/GemmaRose)]


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